James Badge Dale Joins IRON MAN 3 as Eric Savin

With production only a few weeks away, the cast is firming up for director Shane Black’s Iron Man 3. Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, and Don Cheadle are all set to return for the third installment of the Iron Man franchise, with Sir Ben Kingsley, Guy Pearce, and Rebecca Hall rounding out the newcomers of the cast. Now one more Marvel newbie has been added in a particularly interesting role, as Variety reports that James Badge Dale (The Pacific) has joined the cast as Eric Savin aka Coldblood. Hit the jump for more.

The plot of Iron Man 3 is said to draw heavily from Warren Ellis’ Iron Man: Extremis comic series and will reportedly involve nanotechnology and the spread of a virus. Kingsley is set as the villain (rumored to be The Mandarin), Pearce is playing Aldrich Killian, and Hall is poised to play a scientist who matches wits with Tony Stark.

Per Variety, Dale will be playing Eric Savin. In the comic series, Savin was a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army at Camp Killan who was put in charge of Project: Ultra. More interesting, though, is the fact that the character eventually stepped on a land mine and was resurrected as the cyborg Coldblood via cybernetic surgery. There’s no word on whether he’d appear as Coldblood in Iron Man 3 or if his role in this film is simply setting the character up for future Marvel installments, but it’s certainly an exciting prospect.

I think Dale makes a fantastic addition to what is already an impressive cast. Credit goes to Black and Marvel for choosing talented thesps in lieu of “pretty actors” or people chosen simply for their commercial value. Dale impressed earlier this year in The Grey, and he’ll next be seen in Robert Zemeckis’ Flight. Furthermore, he has roles opposite Brad Pitt in World War Z and in Disney’s The Lone Ranger.

Production on Iron Man 3 begins next month in North Carolina before moving to China later this summer. Jon Favreau, who directed the first two Iron Man installments, recently revealed that he’ll serve as a producer on IM3 and will be “very involved” in the production. The film is slated to open on May 3rd, 2013.